


a  clear expression of mixed feelings

by scornandivory



Series: the house of astarion [2]
Category: Baldur's Gate
Genre: M/M, fun from astarion's pov!, in which cazador serves his narrative funtion as an angst generator, like post early access content, look i wanna write about astarion having a pc get tortured nightmare too, no beta we die like we rolled a nat 1 on that second persuasion check, takes place a little while after the crash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:55:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28797231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scornandivory/pseuds/scornandivory
Summary: The bricks are cool against his back. If he concentrates on that, maybe he'll be able to distract himself from how Kestrel stopped screaming an hour ago.
Relationships: Astarion (Baldur's Gate)/Original Male Character(s)
Series: the house of astarion [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2110398
Comments: 1
Kudos: 35





	a  clear expression of mixed feelings

**Author's Note:**

> ok so i know i'm posting this more or less concurrently with "a careful dance" (aka part one) but pls be advised this happens much later. i'm thinking it takes place about two thirds of the way through the game, which is when i imagine you're going to have to option to start to pursue cazador, so basically this takes place a nebulous amount of time after early access. sorry to go from 0 to 100 real fast but. i mean. i wanted to write the angst sequence too you guys.

The brick behind him is cold, enough so that it creeps through the thin material of his shirt. The chill seems to be enhanced by the gloom. It is, of course, night—Astarion and Cazador are both awake, after all—and the shadows of the otherwise empty corridor seem to loom hungrily. The only light is a thin slat that glances across Astarion’s left shoulder and illuminates a line on the wall in front of him. It ebbs and flows gently, trickling out from where Cazador graciously left the door a foot and a half from Astarion’s left ajar so he could hear what was happening inside. Now, though, the only thing that seeps through the threshold is the flickering glow; Kestrel stopped screaming an hour ago.

He hadn’t thought there would be a worse sound than the ranger's whimpers, those pained little sounds slipping out from between clenched teeth. Then his pain had truly been given a voice and the wails had ricocheted down the dark corridor and Astarion had thought _no, this, this is the worst part._ And then it had all faded away into silence and an hour later here Astarion was, unable to move, unable to do anything but keep perfectly still and silent as his ears strained for any sign that Kestrel still lived in any form.

There’s a soft thud from inside the room, and then the sound of rustling cloth. Any fleeting notion about the temperature immediately flees his mind as he listens, terror ensnaring his ribcage and crushing it inwards. Soft footsteps fall from somewhere beyond his vision, too even to be Kestrel. They tap out an uneven rhythm, starting and pausing in odd bursts, and then growing ever so slightly louder as they approach the door. Astarion’s muscles tense as though he’s lying in ambush, waiting to rip out the neck of the approaching enemy. He wants to snarl at the knowledge that he is too firmly shackled for rebellion of any kind, but even that is beyond him. His master told him to _stay perfectly still._ He cannot do anything else.

Cazador pushes the door open wide enough to peer out of and gives a thin, gloating smile when he sees Astarion, like he's pleased to see his inescapable mandates still hold power over his reacquired puppet.

“There you are,” he says, the smile growing across a face that could be called "stately" if not for how malicious every line of it was. There’s a smudge of blood over his right cheekbone. “Come see, I think this is one of my better ones.” He turns in a whirl of silk robes and cruelty and disappears back into the room as Astarion’s legs jerk to obey.

There is no time to prepare himself in the brief seconds it takes Astarion to round the corner. For a brief moment, he thinks _I’ll close my eyes, he didn’t say I couldn’t, I’ll close my eyes and I won’t see it_ , but he knows he will. He can’t take not knowing whether Kestrel lives or not, whether there is hatred or forgiveness waiting for him ahead. Then he looks at the bed and thinks _ah, no, I should have closed my eyes._

There is neither reproach nor absolution in Kestrel’s gaze; there is nothing there at all. Though his chest raises and lowers with shallow breaths, his face is blank, absent. When he’d first met Kestrel and first begun to desire him, Astarion had marveled at how differently he and Cazador had worn the few features they shared, namely their eyes. Cazador’s eyes were dark like a curtain being drawn to keep out the light; Kestrel’s had been like the night sky, sharp and glittering. Now they were the dull black of grave dirt. Astarion forced himself to look lower, which did not help.

The bite marks were expected, but they still sent a mixture of dread, rage, and guilt jolting through Astarion. There were three that he could see. Two, one on the side of his neck and his left wrist, were feeding bites. The third, scored into the muscle north of his collarbone, was there to mark territory. They were bloodless affairs, licked clean. It was not until midway down Kestrel’s ribcage that the blood started. It spilled onto Cazador’s sheets—an almost liquid crimson silk, for his master’s aesthetic pleasure in this very situation—and formed pools in the dips of Kestrel’s body. There was enough to make it shocking that the wood elf still clung to life, however tenuously, but not enough to blot out the red words curving down over the jut of his left hip, ending a few inches under his navel.

Cazador runs a reverent hand over his work, trailing along his verse with light fingers that leave trails in the blood. “The last two lines have given me some trouble; nevertheless, the sun rises and I am called to sleep. Perhaps in my dreams I shall think of better words—after all, there will be time for more revisions tomorrow. Still, I do find myself quite fond of this one as it is now. Read.”

Astarion bends forward as though there’s an invisible hand on the back of his neck forcing him to double over, eyes not moving from the poem. Cazador watches, silent and superior, as he reads.

_Ah, meadowlark, drowning in your auspices—_

_Such sweet folly_

_To taste love on a liar's tongue._

Originally, it read ‘to seek love in a lion’s jaws' and I kept going back and forth between the two phrases,” Cazador says in dry, papery voice, bringing his bloody fingers up to gently brush the hair hour of Kestrel’s blank eyes. “I do like the original quite a bit, but the imagery of the lions felt empty to me. I do try to keep my craft from being simply ornamental.” He sighs like the decision between two shitty lines of poetry is the only problem in the world, like the room doesn’t reek of copper and pain. “But tell me, Astarion, you were the one who brought this little prize to me. What think you?”

“It’s hideous.” The words are ripped out of Astarion’s throat. “He deserved better. He deserved so much better.”

Cazador tuts. “Than you? Indisputably. After all, all it took was the implication I might spare you the just punishment for your little rebellious phase if you gave me a suitable distracting bauble and you handed him right over.”

“I didn’t.” He grits the words out.

“Oh, but you _did._ There he was, all poised and heroic like an epic come to life, ready to defend you until his dying breath. And you realized that your miserable little existence gnawing on rats and being my unfaithful palimpsest would be Elysium compared to what came next so you threw him right on the sword for you. Or the fang, I suppose, and the carving knife." The thin white line of his lips twitches upwards ever so slightly in what would, on anyone else, have been a full-bellied laugh. "I hadn't realized you liked your servitude so much that you'd fight to extend it under such treacherous means. Though really, you can’t be blamed for how things turned out. He looked at you with those pretty little eyes and saw _all_ the disgusting little cracks in your facade you wanted to hide and what did he do? He bared his neck for you, combed your hair for you to soothe your vain little heart. He _fell in love with you._ Really, we’ve done him a favor here, you and I. This world is not kind to the soft-hearted or soft-headed.”

Cazador reaches down and slides a hand to the back of Kestrel’s neck, then grips in hard enough that his fingernails draw blood and hauls him up by it like a kitten. Kestrel goes easily, limp and pale, as Cazador leans in to nuzzle at the juncture where the curve of his jaw meets the column of his throat. His blank eyes roll around the room, passing over Astarion without seeing him. Once, that had been all Astarion had wanted, for the too-sharp little ranger to overlook him once in a while. How stupid of him. Cazador sighs softly, the sound muffled by skin, and Kestrel’s body twitches the way he always has after being bitten. Astarion can’t look away, unsure if it’s because of his master’s commands or because he’s so incredibly, impotently selfish with Kestrel that he craves to be present for even his last breath. The only sound in the room is the rattling breath of the one occupant who’s still alive but very soon won’t be and the soft sounds of Cazador swallowing. They burrow into Astarion’s mind, wrapping around it like thorned vines, and he feels like his limbs have been dunked in ice. He thinks he’s shaking, but then, that might be the room. The light in Kestrel’s eyes gutters and dies, his gaze fixed somewhere over Astarion’s left shoulder. Maybe fate would be merciful and this would be the end for him, a harrowing but definite finale. More likely, so much more likely, he would wake in a few hours, ravenous, in pain, and knowing exactly who had been the cause of all of it.

There’s a sound like a spring breeze, and it takes Astarion a moment to realize that Kestrel, still frozen in death, is shushing him. The sound comes again.

“Shhhh, it’s not real. It’s not real, and I have you.” The room behind Kestrel vanishes, taking Cazador with it. It’s replaced by the black-blue of the night sky, skirted by a dark tree line. Kestrel remains, eyes sharp and concerned, wearing a shirt he’d pulled out of a barrel in the refugee camp that slid down around his shoulders so show off his pretty, unbloodied neck. There’s a disorienting moment, not unlike being spun around too quickly, as Astarion reconciles himself with reality.

“I,” he says after a moment, “have decided: I do not care for unintentional dreaming. I don’t envy people who actually have to sleep. They’re awful, and I’m quite through with them.” He doesn’t bother trying to seem detached; if he could deal with the vision, Kestrel can deal with his feelings about it.

“I think we’re probably a special case,” Kestrel says, amused. He’s still concerned—Astarion can see it in the set of his brow—but he’s doubtlessly realized by this point that Astarion is unlikely to give a full account of his inner turmoil if asked. Clever, pretty boy with his clever, pretty eyes. Smart enough to see through Astarion’s lies like polished glass, stupid enough to kiss him anyways. Astarion wonders what Kestrel would do if he knew his lover’s most closely held secrets and fears. Would he still smile with the same affection if Astarion told him, point blank, _I would rather kill you myself than let Cazador take you from me; I would drink your dying breath like wine_? Astarion has the sinking suspicion he would take it in with the same easy consideration he had with everything else; that he would look at the words like tea leaves and divine some truth Astarion wasn’t yet ready to admit to himself, let alone anyone else.

Astarion pushes himself into position to return to his trance, and next to him Kestrel does the same. He’d bullied Astarion into splitting a bedroll between them— “after all, we only need half the space each”—and let the mutt he’d discovered in the woods sprawl out over the redundant bedding a week and change ago and had yet to go back to his own ways. This time Kestrel presses closer than usual so that his left side is a line of heat held firmly against Astarion’s right and, when Astarion doesn’t pull away, tilts his head in as well. Astarion leans into him, in part reflexively and in part because he is on some level a shivering creature desiring of comfort, and they sit there crown to crown and shoulder to shoulder as Kestrel’s breathing evens out. Kestrel slips easily back into his trance, but then, it’s been a long day. Astarion sits, feeling every breath his lover takes and letting the frigid realization that he will lose this (if not to Cazador then to the tadpole, and if not to the tadpole then to time) wash over him, and tries to fathom how he could have made a mistake of this magnitude without noticing

**Author's Note:**

> do you fucking know how much i wanted to write these two spooning. i had an entire scene written and then i remembered elves fucking meditate like environmental science majors who really want you to know about their semester abroad in india. goddAMMIT wotc lore. instead i had to put actual thought into how two losers who "sleep" sitting up would cuddle.
> 
> also i (whoopsie daysies) had to rewrite basically all of cazador's shit because it was written out before i listened to his datamined content and i did NOT guess his personality correctly.


End file.
